First Year Gateway Course Completion Dashboard

The First Year Gateway Course Completion Dashboard shows how many students have successfully completed their required math or English gateway courses in their first academic year. This dashboard can help you determine, assess, and address any gaps in gateway course completion, a critical leading indicator of on-time credential completion.

Which Students Are Included

The dashboard calculations only include first-time and transfer-in students who attempted at least one credit in their first academic year. It excludes students with “unknown” attendance types.

Dashboard Criteria

Gateway Requirements

The Clearinghouse determines if a student is required to complete a gateway course(s) using the values reported in the institution’s PDP cohort data file. The dashboard tracks students who have a value of R for any gateway course (math and/or English) in the data file. It does not track students who are not required to complete a gateway course(s), including students seeking certificates and students who have already completed their gateway requirements prior to enrollment.

Course Completion

The dashboard searches the institution’s PDP course data file for courses flagged as English or math gateway courses to determine if students who are required to take a gateway course(s) have completed their gateway requirements. You can adjust the course completion criteria using the completed Gateway course(s) dropdown (see Gateway Completion for more information).

The dashboard calculates gateway course completion as the number of students who have completed a required gateway course(s) in their first year divided by the total number of students required to complete a gateway course.

Course Grade(s)

By default, the dashboard considers students who have earned a grade of D or above (excluding D-) or P (pass) in a gateway course as having completed the course. You can adjust the grade criteria using the English grade(s) and Math grade(s) filters (see Gateway Grade(s) for more information). If a student attempted the same gateway course multiple times within their first year, the dashboard uses the highest grade the student earned in the course to determine if the student has completed the course and as the basis for the filters.

First Year

The dashboard determines a student’s first year based on their starting term, including summer and intersession terms, not on the institution’s academic year.

Examples

• If a student started taking courses at the institution in the 2017 fall term, their first year would include Fall 2017, Winter 2017, Spring 2018, and Summer 2018.
• If a student started taking courses at the institution in 2018 spring term, their first year would include Spring 2018, Summer 2018, Fall 2018, Winter 2018.

Dashboard Sections

Gateway Course Specifications

You can use the Gateway Course Specifications filters to adjust all visualizations on this dashboard. By default, the dashboard shows anyone who was required to take Gateway and completed their required course(s) with any gateway grade (D and above as explained in Course Grade(s)). You must hit Apply Settings to update the dashboards after making or changing selections.

Gateway Requirement

Use the required Gateway course(s) dropdown filter limit to students based on which gateway course(s) they are required to take. Multiple values can be selected. You can select English Only, Math Only, and/or English and Math. The completed course filter and the grade filter may be limited depending on the required selection. For example, selecting English Only required will limit the completed Gateway course(s) filter to English and will disable the Math grade filter.

Gateway Completion

The completed Gateway course(s) dropdown updates the visualizations to the selected course completion criteria. You can select a completion criterion combined with the Gateway requirement filter to view English and math gateway course completion separately or together.  Only one option can be selected.

• All Required: Considers students as completed gateway only if they completed all required courses based on their gateway requirements. For example, if a student is only required to take English, then the student just needs to complete their English gateway course to be counted as complete. If the student is required to take both math and English, then the student must complete both of those gateway courses to be counted as complete.
• English: Considers students who have completed their required English gateway course as having completed their gateway courses (regardless of their math gateway requirements).
• Math: Considers students who have completed their required math gateway course as having completed their gateway courses (regardless of their English gateway requirements).
• English and/or Math: Considers students as having completed gateway if they completed any gateway course they were required to take. For example, if the student was required to take both English and math and they completed only English or only math or both, then this option counts them as completed. If the student was required to take only math or only English and they completed that course, then they too are counted as complete.
• Only One Required Course: Limits to students who have only completed a single required gateway course. For example, if the student was required to take both English and math and they completed only English and did not complete math, then that student included. If the student was required to take only math or only English and they completed that course, then they are also included.
• Only English Gateway Course: Limits to students who have only completed their required English gateway course. For example, if the student was required to take both English and math and they completed only English and did not complete math, then that student is included. If the student was required to take only English and they completed that course, then they are also included. This selection will disable the Math grade filter.
• Only Math Gateway Course: Limits to students who have only completed their required math gateway course. For example, if the student was required to take both English and math and they completed only math and did not complete math, then that student included. If the student was required to take only math and they completed that course, then they are also included. This selection will disable the English grade filter.

Gateway Grade(s)

You can use the English grade(s) and Math grade(s) filters to set your own grade criteria. The dashboard considers a gateway course completed only if the student earned a grade within the option you selected.  Multiple values can be selected. For some required Gateway and completed Gateway options, one of these filters may be disabled due to the grade not being applicable for that selection. For example, limiting to required Math Only students will disable the English grade filter.

Once all criteria have been selected, select “Apply Settings” to adjust all visualizations on this dashboard.

Examples

• To see how many of the students who are required to take English gateway courses have completed their English gateway courses in their first year (regardless of their math gateway requirements), select both the English Only and English and Math options from the required Gateway course(s) filter to include all students who are required to take English gateway courses. Then select English from the completed Gateway course(s) The dashboard will show how many/what percentage of students who are required to take English gateway courses have completed their English gateway courses in their first year.
• To see how many of the students who are required to take math gateway courses have completed their math gateway courses in their first year (regardless of their English gateway requirements), select both the Math Only and English and Math options from the required Gateway course(s) filter to include all students who are required to take math gateway courses. Then select Math from the completed Gateway course(s) The dashboard will show what percentage of students who are required to take math gateway courses have completed their English gateway courses in their first year.
• To see how many of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed only their English gateway courses in their first year, select English and Math from the required Gateway course(s) Then select Only English from the completed Gateway course(s) dropdown. The dashboard will show what percentage of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed only their English gateway courses in their first year.
• To see how many of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed only their math gateway courses in their first year, select English and Math from the required Gateway course(s) Then select Only Math from the completed Gateway course(s) dropdown. The dashboard will show how what percentage of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed only their math gateway courses in their first year.
• To see how many of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed both math and English gateway courses in their first year, select English and Math from the required Gateway course(s) Then select All Required from the completed Gateway course(s) dropdown. The dashboard will show what percentage of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed both math and English gateway courses in their first year.
• To see how many of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed only one of their required gateway courses in their first year, select English and Math from the required Gateway course(s) Then select Only One Required from the completed Gateway course(s) dropdown. The dashboard will show what percentage of the students who are required to take both math and English gateway courses have completed either their English gateway course or their math gateway course, but not both, in their first year.

Year-Over-Year Gateway Course Completion by Dimension

This section shows your institution’s overall gateway completion rate across cohorts, broken down by dimension (default: Attendance). The dashboard presents this data as lines, highlighting changes in first-year gateway course completion from one cohort to the next.

Year-Over-Year Gateway Course Completion Percentages/Counts

This section shows how the institution’s gateway course completion has changed from one cohort to the next. The dashboard displays the data in bars. The blue part of each bar shows the percentage of students in each cohort who have completed their required gateway courses during their first year. The gray part of each bar shows the percentage of students in each cohort who have not completed their required gateway courses during their first year.  The bars are defaulted to show percentages but can be adjusted to show counts.